for a moment how a newspaperman works on such a night as this.

His carefully prepared and proportioned story is old almost as
soon as he has telephoned it to London. The great event of
6 p.m., the abandonment of the referendum, is overtaken by
the great event of 8 p.m., the resignation of Schuschnigg, at
10 p.m. Seyss-Inquart's usurpation of power throws into the
shadow the resignation of Schuschnigg, and so it goes on, on
such a night as this, far into the small hours. The newspaper-
man, in his distant office, struggles incessantly with the monster
of news, that immediately grows a new head for every one that
he strikes off.

I was well equipped for all emergencies. My typewriter stood
on a little table by the window; I could tap away on it and by
lifting my eyes an inch watch the progress of the revolution
in the street. I am a very fast worker on the typewriter,
and often cannot type quickly enough to keep up with my
own thoughts, but I was a laggard, toiling vainly after the race
of events, on this evening of March i ith, my birthday. At my
elbow stood the telephone, that incessantly rang, and behind
me the loud-speaker, with my pad and pencil before it, and
repeatedly I had to stop writing and take down in English
shorthand some important announcement that came through
in German. Not everybody can do this, because the symbols
of English shorthand cannot be used for the sounds of the
German language, so that you have to translate into English
in your head before writing. This is difficult because the
construction of German is so different, and the verb or some
other word essential to the understanding of the whole often
comes at the end of a long sentence, so that you have to
leave a series of gaps and dash back and fill them in.

While I worked, the music of Viennese waltzes came from
the loud-speaker, tunes that I had loved, and now found
empty and trivial and exasperating. I would never have
believed that they could so irritate me. They had been written
in and for the Vienna that was dying before my eyes. Already
they seemed shockingly incongruous* •-•

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